ogiTHE    INLAND 
§H  CITY 

1  ^B!        ^  Letter  and  A  Poem 

7  ^""^     OMUND    CLARENCE    STEDMAN 


REPRINTED  BY  THE 
ACADEMY  PRESS 
WITH  ILLUSTRA 
TIONS  BY  THE  NOR 
WICH  ART  SCHOOL 
ON  THE  OCCASION 
OF  THE  CELEBRA 
TION  OF  THE  TWO 
HUNDRED  AND  FIF 
TIETH  ANNIVER 
SARY  OF  THE  SET 
TLEMENT  OF  THE 
TOWN  OF  NORWICH 


NORWICH    CONNECTICUT 
1659  -  1909 


of  California 
I  Regional 
'  Facility 


er>m  ^ 


THE    INLAND 
CITY 

A  Letter  and  A  Poe?n 

by 

EDMUND    CLARENCE    STEDMAN 

REPRINTED  BY  THE 
ACADEMY  PRESS 
WITH  ILLUSTRA 
TIONS  BY  THE  NOR 
WICH  ART  SCHOOL 
ON  THE  OCCASION 
OF  THE  CELEBRA 
TION  OF  THE  TWO 
HUNDRED  AND  FIF 
TIETH  ANNIVER 
SARY  OF  THE  SET 
TLEiMENT  OF  THE 
TOWN  OF  NORWICH 

NORWICH    CONNECTICUT 
1659  -  1909 


FOREWORD 
(to  the  1906  edition) 

JKTorivich  is  proud  to  claim  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman  as  an  adopted  son  and  lie  is  alivajs 
ready  to  do  honor  to  the  home  of  his  early  youth. 
He  came  to  Norivich  at  fi-ve  years  of  age  and  li'ved 
ivith  relatives  in  Norivich  Toivriy  attending  school 
here  until  he  ivas  fitted  for  Tale  College  ar.d 
returning  at  a  later  period  to  be  the  editor  oj  a  local 
newspaper.  He  alivays  kept  his  interest  in  the  toivn 
and  his  friendship  for  its  inhabitants. 

Some  years  ago  Mr.  Stedman  ivas  inuited  to  address 
the  Norivich  Toivn  Rural  Association  at  its  annual 
meeting.  He  ivas  unable  to  be  present  on  that  occasion^ 
but  ivrote  a  letter  of  regret.,  a  part  of  ivhich  is  giuen 
in  these  pages,  making  at  the  same  time  a  generous  con- 
tribution to  the  Association. 

^^The  Inland  City''  ivas  published  in  one  of  Mr. 
Stedman' s  early  books  of  poems  ivhich  is  noiv  out  of 
print.  Hence  its  reprint  at  the  press  of  The  Norivich 
Free  Academy  is  most  acceptable  and  fitting, 

Maria  Perit  Oilman 


THE  LETTER 


20iM;iQ 


«^'. 


'iii&i-^^ 


:^W^ 


«<^ 
-^^ 


l:k^^',  ...r.\    THE  LETTER    JVw^J^J?''-i^ 

<(T  et  me  confess  that  I  sat  down  to  write  to  you, 
just  now,  —  as  I  have  written  to  several  other 
Arbor  Day  Committees,  —  that  I  am  so  embarrassed 
this  month  with  overwork  that  I  must  ask  you  to 
wait  another  year  for  the  few  words  so  kindly  desired. 

"But  your  letter,  a  graceful  petal  from  'The  Rose 
uf  New  England',  calls  up  memories.  On  second 
thought  1  cannot  put  off"  in  that  way  the  first  request 
sent  me  from  Old  Norwich  Town. 

"To  the  'Landing'  one  might  give  the  go-by,  but 
not  to  the  'Old  Town'  as  I  knew  it  j  or,  rather,  as 
I  know  it  now,  and  could  not  have  known  it  until 
after  some  knowledge  of  the  outer  and  less  charac- 
teristic world. 

"For,  I  now  comprehend  that  even  a  Hawthorne 
might  have  found  in  old  Norwich  food  for  his  imagi- 
nation, and  need  not  have  gone  abroad  for  themes  and 
types.  Where  was  there,  indeed,  a  place  to  rival  it, 
with  its  rocks  and  trees  and  ancient  manor  houses  and 


o(^»f»T4' 


*«. 


vM^^ivf^ 


fragrant  gardens  ;  its  dear  old  ladies  shutting  up  the 
front  windows  of  their  mossy  houses,  but  airing,  in 
their  ancient  carriage,  tl^eir  more  ancient  manners  and 
their  fine  old  lace;  its  curfew  rung  at  9  p.  m.;  its 
burying  ground,  dating  from  the  time  of  William  and 
Mary ;  its  conference-meeting  courtships  5  its  elm- 
bordered  green,  where  grass  needed  no  cutting,  for 
the  cows  clipped  the  lower  end,  and  we  Academy 
boys  gave  it  small  chance  to  grow  between  the  Church 
and  'Fuller's  Store'  ;  its  base-ball  and  turkey-matches 
on  Fast  Days  ;  its  bon-fires  on  Thanksgiving  ;  its  baked 
beans  and  sewing  circles  and  revivals  and  town  meet- 
ings ;  its  Deacons  and  Tithing-men  and  Select-men 
and  Justices  of  the  Peace  ;  its  pretty  girls  each  one  fit 
to  be  the  wife  of  a  President,  far  too  sweet  and  good 
to  be  sold  to  any  English  Duke  ! 

"Old  Norwich  !  where  no  one  ever  got  very  rich, 
not  even  Mr.  Fuller ;  where  our  tailor  was  a  states- 
man and  our  shoemaker  a  philosopher  ;  where,  in 
fact,  there  was  no  dull  side  to  the  picture,  except  the 
long  sermons,  and  a  general  conviction  on  the  part  of 
the  grown-up  residents  that  a  funeral  was  the  nicest, 
as  it  was  the  most  frequent,  kind  of  entertainment, 
and  that  it  was  ever  so  much  better  to  go  to  the  house 
of  mourning  than  to  the  house  of  feasting,  —  Thanks- 
giving Day  excepted.  Mrs.  Gaskell's  'Cranford'  was 
not  a  'circumstance'  to  that  picturesque  town,  where  I 
played  and  studied  and  dreamed,  but  most  of  all  ran 


A 

m 
1., 


■■::t 


wild  amid  its  woods  and  waters,  during  the  ten  yt^ars 
of  adolescence,  which  are  the  longest  season  of  every- 
one's life. 

"Two  summers  ago  I  passed  a  week  with  our  young 
romancer  'Sidney  Luska',  visiting  the  old  town  after 
a  quarter  of  a  centun, 's  absence.  I  saw  the  good 
work  of  the  Rural  Association.  So  many  more  trees, 
so  much  more  trim  and  trig,  yet  picturesque.  The 
whole  circuit  'round  town'  through  a  continuous  grove. 
One  had  to  climb  above  it  to  take  it  all  in. 

"No  one  can  be  born  amid  such  beauty  without 
forming  unconsciously  a  taste  for  the  beautiful ;  it  is 
the  only  place  that  I  know  of  where  one  could  endure 
the  Westminster  confession  without  revision. 

"But  I  had  two  griefs  during  my  visit.  The  first, 
all  will  comprehend  who  are  familiar  with  the  annals 
of  the  Stedman  homestead  and  with  those  of  Yantic 
cemetery  ;  the  other,  was  the  loss  of  my  boyhood's 
companion,  that  I  had  verily  thought  immortal  —  I 
mean  the  brook  which  came  down  by  the  Scotland 
road  and  the  present  Gulliver  place,  through  the 
meadow  and  the  hollow  in  front  of  Deacon  Stedman's 
house  and  so  on  to  the  Yantic  river.  I  do  not  know 
what  it  was  called.  I  never  asked  its  name  ;  it  used 
to  flow  right  along  without  calling  summer  and  winter, 
and  to  put  on  great  airs  in  the  spring  freshet  time. 
It  was  to  me  one  of  the  most  live  and  beautiful  things 
on   earth.      I  used  so  often  to  seek  its  company  and 


%§n& 


follow  it  up  into  the  woods,  and  so  much  of  it  ran 
through  my  uncle's  land  to  the  northeast,  that  I  grew 
to  consider  it  my  own  brook.  There  were  trout  left 
in  it,  and  often  after  a  rain  did  I  catch  a  half  dozen. 
I  have  caught  larger  ones  since,  but  none  worth  so 
much  to  me.  1  know  every  turn  and  hole  and  riffle 
in  that  brook.  Nobody  ventured  to  utilize  it  for 
anything. 

"What  haunted  me  in  those  days  as  I  went 
mooning  along  it  —  what  I  sought  to  find  —  I  do 
not  know  ;  but  on  the  first  day  of  my  recent  visit  I 
went  to  its  banks  ;  I  knew  what  I  was  looking  for  ; 
it  was  nothing  less  than  that  which  Longfellow  has 
entitled  'My  Lost  Youth'.  Well,  the  brook  was  as 
much  gone  as  my  youth,  just  about  as  much  ;  there 
was,  to  be  sure,  a  tiny  trickle  glimmering  between  its 
narrow  banks  —  the  stream  too  tiny  and  the  banks 
too  narrow  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  lens  of  age 
substituted  for  the  magnifying  eye  of  boyhood. 
Plainly  there  had  been  a  conspiracy  somewhere. 
The  next  morning  I  followed  the  trail  through  the 
meadows  and  up  through  the  woods,  until  at  last, 
away  at  the  farthest  boundary  of  m,y  early  rambles,  1 
came  upon  a  huge  stone  dam,  imprisoning  a  sparkling 
mimic  lake,  and  the  mystery  was  solved.  Dr.  Hale 
has  told  of  'the  man  who  stole  a  meeting  house'. 
No  man  would  have  dared  steal  my  brook.  It  took 
a  corporation.      Yes,  there  were  the  names  engraved 


upon  the  brook's  prison  walls.  They  actually  gloried 
in  their  crime  !  Of  course  it  was  done  by  the  'down 
towners',  —  and  under  the  transparent  pretext  of 
needing  water  !  In  my  day  that  was  not  a  fashionable 
beverage  at  the  'Landing'.  The  cause  of  temperance 
doubtless  has  advanced  5  I  confess  there  was  room  for 
it }  but  the  old  town  has  lost  one  of  its  prettiest 
features. 

"However,  the  Rural  Association  has  added 
beauties  that  make  amends  for  all  that  I  have  missed, 
and  I  will  no  longer  'Look  before  and  after,  and  sigh 
for  what  is  not'." 


THE   INLAND  CITY 


,y 


'•'1 
^s^^-' 

P^^ 


■^^0Mt 


:^';^^f#o 


1^:.:..:-¥zn.    THE  INLAND   CITY     f  X^lr^^ 

(1851) 
/"Guarded  by  circling  streams  and  wooded  mountains, 

Like  sentinels  round  a  queen, 
Dotted  with  groves  and  musical  with  fountains, 
The  city  lies  serene. 

Not  far  away  the  Atlantic  tide  diverges. 

And,  up  the  southern  shore 
Of  gray  New  England,  rolls  in  shortened  surges, 

That  murmur  evermore. 

The  fairy  city  !  not  for  frowning  castle 

Do  I  extol  her  name ; 
Not  for  the  gardens  and  the  domes  palatial 

Of  Oriental  fame  ; 

Yet  if  there  be  one  man  who  will  not  rally. 

One  man,  who  sayeth  not 
That  of  all  cities  in  the  Eastern  valley 

Ours  is  the  fairest  spot ; 


Then  let  him  roam  beneath  those  elms  gigantic, 

Or  idly  wander  where 
Shetucket  flows  meandering,  where  Yantic 

Leaps  through  the  cloven  air. 

Gleaming  from  rock  to  rock  with  sunlit  motion, 

Then  slumbering  in  the  cove  ; 
So  sinks  the  soul,  from  Passion's  wild  devotion, 

To  the  deep  calm  of  love. 

And  journey  with  me  to  the  village  olden, 

Among  whose  devious  ways 
Are  mossy  mansions,  rich  with  legends  golden 


Of  early  forest  days  ; 


Elysian  time  !  when  by  the  rippling  water. 

Or  in  the  woodland  groves. 
The  Indian  warrior  and  the  Sachem's  daughter 

Whispered  their  artless  loves  ; 

Legends  of  fords,  where  Uncas  made  his  transit, 

Fierce  for  the  border  war, 
And  drove  all  day  the  alien  Narragansett 

Back  to  his  haunts  afar  ; 

Tales  of  the  after  time,  when  scant  and  humble 

Grew  the  Mohegan  band. 
And  Tracy,  Griswold,  Huntington  and  Trumbull, 

Were  judges  in  the  land. 


'^M&&im^^f'. 


i/i-c 


% 


So  let  the  caviler  feast  on  old  tradition, 

And  then  at  sunset  climb 
Vp  von  green  hill,  where,  on  his  broadened  vision 

May  burst  the  view  sublime  ! 

The  citv  spires,  with  stately  power  impelling 

The  soul  to  look  above, 
And  peaceful  homes,  in  many  a  rural  dwelling, 

Lit  up  with  flames  of  love  ;  — 

And  then  confess,  nor  longer  idly  dally, 

While  sinks  tiie  lingering  sun, 
That  of  all  cities  in  the  Eastern  valley 

Ours  is  the  fairest  one. 


.:^^ 


■^- 


^4m'^''-i.r^--:m 


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